Initiative launched to reduce obesity among Riyadh school students

RIYADH: The ministries of education and health on Monday jointly launched an initiative aimed at reducing obesity rates among male and female students.
The initiative was launched at one of Riyadh’s schools, located in a housing complex affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The campaign, sponsored by Aquafina and Quicker, comes at the start of the second school semester, and targets 1,000 general education schools in six regions and provinces in its first stage including Riyadh, Jeddah, Najran, Jouf, Eastern Province and Makkah, Saudi Press Agency said.
Later, Minister of Health Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah and Minister of Education Dr. Ahmed Al-Isa honored winning students in a drawing contest accompanying the campaign. They also inspected a mini-exhibition organized on this occasion.
The initiative primarily targets 6,000 schools, or 20 percent of the Kingdom’s general education schools, for the next five years, and falls within one of the Ministry of Health’s initiatives.
It also aims to enhance a healthy life through the improvement of eating habits and increased physical activity of students due to association of obesity with many non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and arthritis.
Based on figures of the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.4 billion adults are overweight, and over 40 million children under five suffer from obesity across the world.
On the other hand, the obesity rate in the Kingdom stands at 28.7 percent while obesity among the over 15-year age category stands at 30.7 percent, based on the National Survey of Health Information for 2013.
Officials of the ministries of health and education see that schools are a suitable place for protective intervention as many schools are located in districts with many primary health care centers.
The initiative is meant to reduce the rates of obesity among children and school students to 5 percent in the next five years in the selected schools.
Experts say prosperity and new lifestyles are behind the spread of obesity among Saudis at an alarming rate. Accordingly, physical activity among youths has declined and paved the way for the spread of obesity-related diseases.